The invention relates to a bottle carrier made of a foldable flat material, particularly cardboard.
Bottle carriers made of cardboard in the shape of a box enclosing a set of bottles on all sides have been known already. It is further known, that such bottle carriers, in a top wall, have two adjoining punched-out portions into which a hand may be inserted to carry the bottle carrier by a strip-shaped handle defined between the punched-out portions. If such a bottle carrier is used there is a disadvantage that the hand might readily touch the bottle top regions where crown caps are. Furthermore a strong cardboard material has to be employed to prevent the handle from rupture because of the considerable forces that act while it is being carried.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,065,590 discloses an article carrier the top wall of which have a handle strip the ends of which extend into the end walls. The handle strip is adapted to be raised beyond the top wall with raising being made difficult by a top wall flap remaining below the handle strip. In addition, the raising path is limited by the fact that the handle strip will come to lie against the top areas of the articles in the vicinity of the end walls. A two-layered structure of the handle strip is achieved by a reinforcing strip folded below the strip. This involves relatively great technical expenditure in manufacture and leads to local material accumulations which can be a disturbance in storing the pre-glued cut-to-size pieces.
A similar construction is shown in WO 99/28207 A1. However, the handle portion is not reinforced here.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,639,017 and 5,915,546 relate to article carriers with multi-layered handle strips made of superposed flaps of a top wall. The handle strips extend into the end walls and are designed to be raised beyond the top walls. The raising path is limited by the fact that the handle strips will come to lie against the top areas of the end-side articles.
Accordingly, it is the object of the invention to provide a bottle carrier which exhibits more favourable handling characteristics and has a sufficiently strong handle portion.